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Ancient geographers and itineraries mention the town Curubis on the African coast between Clupea (modern Kelibia) and Neapolis (modern Nabeul).[2]

The earliest historical record is an inscription from the time of the Roman civil war, which records that the Pompeian generals P. Attius Varus and Gaius Considius Longus fortified the town in 46 BC.[3] In the years after the civil war the town was made a Roman colony, colonia Iulia Curubis (Pliny the Elder refers to it as libera, "free"), perhaps as part of Julius Caesar's attempt to rid his army of older soldiers and at the same time hold Africa against Pompeian forces.[4] In the year AD 257, the Carthaginian bishop Cyprian was exiled there; his biographer Pontius, who accompanied him into exile, praises the place (12): "provisum esse divinitus … apricum et conpetentem locum, hospitium pro voluntate secretum et quidquid apponi eis ante promissum est, qui regnum et iustitiam dei quaerunt." ("by God's favour a sunny and appropriate place was provided, a refuge secluded as he wished, and whatever was previously promised to be set before those who seek the kingdom and justice of God").

The town had its own theatre. An inscription of the late 2nd century honours the citizen who had created it.[9] Remains of an aqueduct survived to modern times; and the contribution to a mosaic in Ostia by shipowners of Curubis suggest that the town also possessed a port, which has not survived.[10]

A recent account of the life in Korba may be found in Mounira Khemir's narrative "Un coin du carré bleu"[11]

^Broughton (1929), 54-5; CIL VIII 980 and 12452. The town was apparently already a colony by the year 45 BC, when an inscription, CIL VIII 12451, shows a duovir again repairing the walls, or possibly, as Mommsen (1893), 460, suggests, completing the construction begun by the Pompeian generals. For discussion of the puzzles of this inscription, see CIL I2 p. 951, with further literature.